We all know that WoW’s servers have a tendency to overload on big patch days. Blizzard seems to be going out on a limb here. They are promising a playable game at midnight PST on December 7th.

I assume that there has to be some server down time as they flick the “Cataclysm” switch to ON. When will that happen? The night of December 6th, perhaps? Do we believe that everything will be ready to go at midnight, Dec 7th? Past history does not seem to support this.

When the Cataclysm launch date was announced, my first thought was, “I’m taking the day off of work!” Then my second thought was “Why would I do that? The servers will be down all day anyway.” That’s based on years of experience with patches and launches.

All the hype is making me think again about taking Dec 7th off of work to install and play the game. I might be setting myself up for disappointment.

What do you think? Will the game actually be playable on December 7th at midnight PST? Or do you expect hours and hours of delays and downtime?

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6 Responses to “I Want to Believe”

1) Just like with Wrath’s launch day, I’m expecting server outages, login queues, and bugs/glitches galore. This isn’t a gripe against Blizz. Any time you’re releasing that much code to production, no matter how much it’s been tested, you’re going to have problems. That’s how this line of work goes.

2) Looking back on how I treated questing in the first weeks of Wrath, all gogogogogo, I’m kind of disappointed. I want to enjoy the experience more and actually pay attention to what I’m doing.

I’m still working on Dec 7. I don’t expect Amazon/UPS to have my order to me before noon, anyway.

Next thing you know, they’ll be promising health care for allies. I don’t see it working out like glass, but I think it will be playable.
Random: Have you seen the rogue T11 yet? Just loaded a premade 85 last night.

I suspect they’re going to be better setup for it than previously, but having so many players leveling in only two zones is going to get messy.

I’m thinking of spending the night leveling one of my low-level dwarven alts instead of joining the headlong rush to 85 right off the bat; the new leveling zones are probably going to be packed to the point of effectively breaking quest mob respawning, so it may be faster just to let the logjam break up.